The Massachusetts Library System received an inquiry in our continuing education survey about what hospital and medical librarians do. In response, I’m pleased to bring you an interview with Sarah Carnes, the Clinical Librarian at the Bedford VA Medical Center. In this interview, she will share the numerous ways she supports clinical research and contributes to improving the patient experience.

Sarah Carnes, Clinical Librarian

What services do you provide to support the wide-ranging needs of Bedford VA Medical Center’s staff?

As the Clinical Librarian at the Bedford VA Medical Center, I provide support to staff working in a wide variety of disciplines. Clinical and research staff must be current on information in order to conduct evidence-based care and impactful research. The majority of our resources are available online in our Knowledge Library, our user-friendly online medical library platform. Staff also have access to these materials when offsite as many will conduct their in-depth reading outside of normal working hours.

Research shows that for all the convenience of electronic health records, telemedicine, and online medical libraries, there is not enough time in the day for providers to keep up with all the information they wish to access. Clinical librarians possess the expertise to mitigate the barriers between staff and the information they need. Staff request information or assistance via email, phone or in-person. Some of the requests are fulfilled relatively quickly, such as a request for the full-text of an article or information on how to set up a literature alert or offsite account. Others take a great deal more time, such as complex literature searches for differential diagnoses or for systematic reviews–which might take anywhere between three to nine hours. Over the course of the last year and a half, I have completed over 600 searches and reference questions and I estimate that saved staff approximately 450 hours.

In May 2018, the Massachusetts Library System hosted the Research Institute for Public Libraries.  Fifty librarians attended the institute with the goal of building research into their activities.  Interested to learn more about how the institute has benefitted our members this past year, I reached out to Jessi Finnie, the Director of the Scituate Town Library.  In this interview, Jessi will tell you about how she integrated what she learned at RIPL into her workflow and strategic planning process.

Jessi Finnie opening the doors at the Scituate Town Library grand opening.

Reflecting on the Research Institute for Public Libraries (RIPL), what did you think about your experience?

Jessi Finnie:  Overall, I was pleased with my experience at RIPL and left with more tools in my tool belt to manage our library’s Strategic Planning process.

What are the most useful tools and resources you learned about at the RIPL? 

While I already knew how to pull census data, RIPL highlighted tools within FactFinder such as using the advanced search feature to compare data between towns. We also learned of a number of smaller and more niche databases that could provide helpful data such as “Kid’s Count” and some of the information to be found from the Centers for Disease Control.

Learning about new resources is always helpful, but one of my biggest takeaways from the session was simplifying and maximizing my presentation data. We discussed the pros and cons of various types of charts and graphs, and learned a bit about how people respond to these visual tools. I think data analysis comes naturally to many librarians, but presenting data in an impactful way can be a bit more challenging. Continue reading →